


Living With a Poltergeist

by imafriendlydalek



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: (except not really), (or is he?), Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Gen, Ghost Bucky Barnes, Ghosts, I bet Sam looks really good in heels, Poltergeists, Prank Wars, Roommates, Samtember, Steve and Tony are devious bastards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-19
Updated: 2015-09-19
Packaged: 2018-04-21 08:40:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,085
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4822559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imafriendlydalek/pseuds/imafriendlydalek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam was glad when Steve and his boyfriend Tony invited him to move into their pool house. “You’ll have to share with Bucky, though,” Steve had told him, but he’d also assured him that this Bucky kept mostly to himself. Sam hadn’t thought much of it at the time, and for a while he was pretty sure that “Bucky” was either a joke Steve and Tony had come up with or maybe a very shy cat since he had never actually seen anyone else in the house.</p><p>But after a few weeks, Sam was certain that Bucky was actually a ghost.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Living With a Poltergeist

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for Samtember, in celebration of Sam Wilson's birthday! I stole the idea from a prompts post - the prompt was “I thought you were a ghost for four months!”
> 
> This was supposed to be a fluffy Sam/Bucky getting together fic. It is not. Definitely turned out rather differently than I had planned/intended. Oops!

Sam was glad when Steve and his boyfriend Tony invited him to move into their pool house. Okay, pool house was kind of an understatement, since it was easily twice the size of the house Sam had grown up in, with a massive kitchen and even a built-in bar and a bunch of rooms no one ever seemed to use. “You’ll have to share with Bucky, though,” Steve had told him, but he’d also assured him that this Bucky kept mostly to himself. Sam hadn’t thought much of it at the time, and for a while he was pretty sure that “Bucky” was either a joke Steve and Tony had come up with or maybe a very shy cat since he had never actually seen anyone else in the house.

But after a few weeks, Sam was certain that Bucky was actually a ghost. He seemed to be the benevolent type of ghost, and apparently the kind with the power to move objects, but he definitely also had some poltergeist-y tendencies.

The first thing Sam noticed was the glass in the fridge on top of the orange juice jug, as if to say ‘hey, I see you drinking out of the bottle, and I disapprove.’ Sam had assumed it was Steve, because Steve was exactly the type to object to drinking straight from the carton, even though it was Sam’s own container and it's not like anyone else was going to be drinking that juice. So Sam had put the glass back with a shrug. It happened a second time a few days later, except Sam had checked the fridge before he left for his run - no glass - and Steve had been with him the whole time, so Sam figured Tony was in on it too. But then it happened again while Steve and Tony were both away on vacation together, so that was odd.

The second thing Sam noticed was the toilet paper. Sam always threaded it so it rolled over the top - because that’s the right way to do it - but he came home from work one day to find it hanging the other way around. What the heck? He switched it back, but a few days later it was backwards again and soon he was in a silent battle with an unseen Toilet Paper Troll.

That’s when he started noticing other little things - he’d find the TV on in the middle of the night sometimes, or he’d hear the toilet flush when he was certain he was home alone, or footsteps out in the hallway. Once he even found that the hand towels in the bathroom had been exchanged for fresh ones - Sam had been meaning to do that anyway, so it was actually pretty helpful, but it was a little weird to have a ghost doing his cleaning.

“Has anyone ever died out in the pool house?” Sam asked over dinner with Steve and Tony in the main house one night.

Tony just shrugged. “It’s an old house, who knows?”

Sam didn’t mention it again, since he knew Tony and Steve well enough to know that they were devious little shits who would actually go around messing with the thermometers to create cold spots or program the lights to flicker randomly if they found out Sam thought there was a ghost in the house.

But he observed quietly and decided that if he was going to be sharing a house with someone from The Beyond, he could at least try and reach out a little.

He started by arranging all the books in the shelf by genre. The ghost didn’t like that, clearly, because the next morning they were all rearranged in alphabetical order by title. Which is just silly - at least go by author, then title. So that’s what Sam did. He came home from work that evening to find the books all rearranged again, this time sorted by the color on the bindings. Okay, that’s pretty much the dumbest way to arrange books, Sam thought, but it looked kinda cool and he was starting to like this ghost’s sense of humor, so he left it.

His next move was to reprogram the channels on the TV so that what had been the sports channels were now kids’ channels and to set it so that when the TV was turned on, it would automatically play the marathon of Ghost Hunters that he’d downloaded.

The ghost was clearly not happy about that, since it retaliated by switching the salt and the sugar, which made for a rather unpleasant wake-up when Sam tucked into his eggs and coffee the next morning.

Maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to declare a prank war on a poltergeist. Things may have gotten a little out of hand by the time Sam found his running shoes replaced with red sequined pumps, but Sam wasn’t about to back down at that point, so he just started wearing them around the house. He wasn’t sure if ghosts had a particularly good sense of hearing, but he was willing to stick around and find out. 

Plus he kinda liked what those heels were doing for his ass.

He was rocking out to Aretha Franklin in his red shoes while cleaning the house six days later, dancing through the living room as he swiffered the floor.

“Okay, that is definitely not what I had planned to happen.”

The Swiffer and Sam’s heart dropped to the floor, and he may have squeaked like a little girl, but what the fuck, why was there a guy standing in his living room?

“Who the hell are you?” Sam growled, trying to get his heart rate back under control.

The guy just crossed his arms and stayed put, leaning against the door frame as if he owned the place or something. He had a scowl on his face, which was mostly hidden by his long hair, but his lips quirked up slightly in amusement.

“Uh, Bucky. I live here.” There was a detached, matter-of-fact tone to his voice, an unspoken ‘duh’ in his statement.

“Wait - what?”

“Dude, we’ve been living together for, like, four months. You keep eating all my Pop Tarts and rearranging my books.” 

Sam let out a laugh, which turned into the hysterical, uncontrollable kind of laugh that had him doubled over in stitches because he had no idea how else to react.

“Man,” he wheezed when he finally got himself back under control, “I thought you were a ghost!”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic]Living With a Poltergeist](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7430173) by [DuendeVerde4](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DuendeVerde4/pseuds/DuendeVerde4)




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